Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/360

 y bluff

and set our course through the open oaks for a cross ing on Pit Kiver, not far from the military camp spoken of before. We hoped to reach it and cross at dark, and rode like furies. Where did the Indian get these horses ?

The escape so far was a success. At first I had had no hope. The idea of cutting away iron bars with knives seemed a delusive dream. But Indian patience can achieve incredible things. At first the knives would pinch and bite in the little grooves, for the back was of course thicker than the edge. But Paquita was equal to all that. By day she would grind the knives on the rocks, while hiding away in the bushes, till they were thin as wafers. A watch- spring is a common instrument used to cut away bars or rivets. The fine steel lays hold of the iron like teeth. Mexican revolutionists, liable at any time to imprisonment, sometimes have their watch- springs prepared especially for such an emergency; and I have known common cut-throats on the border to have a watch-spring around the arm under the folds of a garment. Prison-breaking in the Old World, owing to the massive and substantial struc tures, is almost a lost art. " But few escapes are made now," said a Newgate prisoner to me, " and those are mostly by strategy, like that of the illus trious prisoner of Ham."

It was nearly dusk when we touched the bank of the river, up which we must ride a mile or so before we came to the crossing.